-Special submission from an anonymous source that cares about our heroes

APRIL 30, 2012

The smoke has barely cleared from the scene of the enormous Kensington factory fire that extinguished the lives of two Philadelphia firefighters. Yet the tough questions are already being asked, chiefly: how could this have happened? Who is responsible?

The answers to those questions and others are hard to come by. There is currently an ongoing investigation and the Fire Marshall has yet to make a determination as to the origin and cause. The results of that investigation could possibly lead to criminal charges being filed against the building's owners, a trio of New York brothers. These real estate speculators (slumlords, some would say) have a penchant for buying up properties, allowing them to fall into or remain in a state of disrepair while not paying their taxes and ignoring repeated, multiple building code violations. The owners of the Kensington factory building were cited over and over for numerous code violations yet never bothered to take appropriate corrective action. They live in Brooklyn.

The failure of the city, in this case, to administer the very basic functions of government - namely keeping the citizens safe from clearly foreseeable disaster - is patently inexcusable. There is no excuse for City Council to not have passed an ordinance aimed at dealing with these imminently dangerous properties YEARS AGO. Yet they are more worried about our diets, soda taxes, and where their next kickback is coming from. Pay to play.

We have witnessed this exact scenario before; enormous buildings left vacant and dilapidated that become havens for crime such as drug activity, prostitution, assaults, vandalism, and murder. They breed public health hazards such as vermin and garbage and short dumping. In short, they drive down property values, destroy neighborhoods, force those who can to flee, and rot the tax base of our city. The very tax base needed to provide vital city services. Like firefighting.

The failure of the city in this instance is manifested in the Department of Licenses and Inspections. L&I commissioner Fran Burns protests that her department did what they could to bring the building into compliance. Sure, they did the bureaucratic thing and filed useless building violations against owners who already owed THOUSANDS of dollars in unpaid taxes and fees. It's scary to think that these officials actually believe they are doing a good job.

L&I is probably the most dysfunctional bureau in a laundry list of dysfunctional city bureaucracies. These agencies sap money from the city budget while repeatedly failing in their basic mission. Just like PHA, DHS, the Sheriff's Office and every other scandal-plagued office in city government.

But it gets worse. When pressed on issues like this L&I (like most agencies) will invariably plead... you guessed it - poverty! Not enough money to police all the properties, not enough inspectors to inspect them, and so on and so forth. Despite dozens of calls to the Mayor's fantasy, boondoggle 311 number, nothing was done. Inspectors actually visited this hundred-year old deathtrap and did next to nothing! In fact, Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez didn't think there was much of a problem here at all.

Seriously, a vacant five-story crime and drug factory in the middle of her district isn't much cause for concern, despite her constituents' pleas for help. She is so out of touch (or intellectually deficient) that she simply can't grasp the enormity of the problem that sat there like a ticking time bomb.

She will be re-elected.

It's not the first time L&I and other city bureaucrats failed Philly firefighters. Remember Meridian? The incorrect settings on the pressure reducing valves (PRV's) were an enormous obstacle to fighting that fire. Three firefighters died there.

So, did these bureaucrats kill Lt. Neary and Firefighter Sweeney by their sheer ignorance, incompetence and neglect? Or do they at least bear some of the responsibility...

Enormous building fires are nothing new to the firefighters of Philadelphia. They've fought them for generations and usually they come out on top. But something has changed. The Nutter administration has declared war on Philadelphia's premier emergency services department. Talk to any of the firefighters who have been around and they will tell you the same thing: they are scared. That's a word that tough guys don't use very often. But in quiet conversations over a couple cold ones in Philly's firefighter hangouts the truth comes out. The rank and file are tired of being led by those they have no confidence in. They are worried that the next time it could be them buried in a pile of bricks or crippled because they had to jump out a window to escape the flames.

At the core of their fear is the Nutter administration's disastrous policies of cutbacks, closings and brownouts, and its appointment of civilians in positions of authority; positions they have no business holding. A prime example is Eryn Santamoor. She's another faceless bureaucrat no one outside the halls of Fire Department Headquarters knows. Yet the consensus from veteran firefighters is that the policies she is trying to force on the department (many outlined in the poorly-produced and fatally-flawed Berkshire study) will lead to more firefighter and civilian deaths and injuries. Dangerous staffing cuts, ridiculous, hybrid fire and EMS combinations, and many "efficiencies" that will do little to straighten out the city's financial problems (mainly because City Council will never stop its tax and spend approach to governing) yet will devastate the department's ability to safely and rapidly respond to fires and emergencies, are be pushed from behind closed doors, out of the public sight.

Much like Mayor Nutter's Chief of Staff Everett Gillison (a career defense attorney), Ms. Santamoor has no experience in emergency services. She holds college degrees in fields completely unrelated to firefighting. Yet she has been heard to fancy herself as Fire Commissioner. Imagine the gall to presume you have the RIGHT to lead firefighters without ever having so much extinguished out a bar-b-q pit? She is another unqualified bureaucrat making decisions that impact the lives and safety of others with smug impunity.

Undoubtedly she was an advocate of the closing of seven fire companies already and the brownout of three more every shift. This decision has left the department critically low on manpower in times when it is most needed; such as multiple emergencies and extra alarm fires. The fire department (arguably the most efficient department in the entire city government) is being devastated by bureaucrats who have no idea what they are doing.

This week's fire was held at five alarms. Most firefighters say the fire should have been seven alarms AT LEAST. Many would say even more. It's interesting to note the fire department seems to be keeping every extra alarm fire no matter how large to five alarms these days. After five alarms they start to run out of companies to cover the rest of the city. They also want to save face by not calling in firefighters on overtime. Two alarms is equivalent to the number of companies Mayor Nutter closed.

Emergency services are not just a line item in a budget. It's about people's lives. A city that is viewed as unsafe repels new residents and investors, those who would become job creators and taxpayers. Lt. Neary and FF. Sweeny are dead because of decisions that were made behind closed doors, by unelected, unaccountable, uncaring, faceless bureaucrats. People who are unqualified to make them or think it's ok to let gigantic vacant death traps rot out the heart and soul of our city.